A proposal for operational semantics and equivalence of finite asynchronous processes

Abstract

We propose an operational interpretation of behaviour of concurrent processes in which concurrency is not interpreted as interleaving of elementary actions. We consider only finite processes and describe them in a reduced version of Milner's CCS. Processes are agents having a number of communication capabilities enabling them to communicate. Communications are made via complementary capabilities when these are ready. We build computation traces wich reflect the dependence and independence relations between events. Traces allow us to define equivalent computations and thereby equivalent processes. We define the "capability structure" of processes and show that two processes are equivalent if and only if they have the same capability structure.